Hello and Welcome to An Altitude Problem, where we are very glad our husband wasn't one of the idiots high-marking in Shrine Bowl. This slide was triggered by the reverberations of B's and his brother-in-law's snowmobiles as they rode past, eyeing the tracks of other riders side-hilling and high-marking and wondering who would be stupid enough to hill-climb in snowpack as unstable as it has been this year. They rode past, turned around and rode back past a few minutes later, and realized it had slid behind them. Just a reminder to all of my faithful few, if you spend any time in the high country, especially this year with it's extremely unstable snow, don't be a moron. Stay on safe snow. Stay out from under slide-prone areas. Don't stay home, just take measures to insure that you can return home.

On a more humorous note, Andy has discovered that burying his rawhide bones in the carpet is just not the same as burying them in the dirt. Not only does the hole he tries so hard to dig never materialize, but when he tries to fill it in by shoveling with his nose, he ends up with a giant rug burn.

Hello and Welcome to An Altitude Problem, where there is no time for writing, just enough time to post few pictures to help sustain any of my faithful few who might still be powder-starved. My friend and I spent the morning at Keystone, in the newly opened Windows. It was deep, after we had gone far enough in to lose everyone's tracks...but I found myself on a bit of a promontory, peering down at cliffs on three sides of me and hip-deep uphill above me when the powder rush subsided and I was able to think clearly again.

I thought this chute looked a little sketchy, hard to fit between the rock and the hard place, a.k.a. the tree trunk, at cliff- riding speeds, so I gambled on the other side, which turned out to be more open, but much more rocky.

So I committed to this side, took a deep breath and a picture, and plunged in...only to plow into a rock under the snow and come to an abrupt stop. Several more stops against buried rocks, and I took my board off and very carefully eased my way side-hill until I was off the rocks...by which time my riding partner was a bit hysterical and asking ski patrol about missing persons protocal.
It was a lot of fun. We buried ourselves several more times, got snow down our backs and snowpants, and came home exhausted and exhilerated from all the pouf and softies and freshies. What a wonderful day.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where it got better. Yes, so soon. I forget so very easily that there will be a slower day. Yesterday, I thought it would never happen. Then suddenly today, only four arrivals. Without warning, I had a slowish day. Okay, I could not go to Breck, where they had eleven inches of fresh pow last night, but had to go to work instead... but I was done working by 2:30, and back home, bags of groceries (well, not exactly groceries, but lots of feel good food- smoothie ingredients and sweets) over my arms, and Bobby was there, and I had started a fire before I went to work, so the house was warm. All afternoon, Bobby watched cars make left hand turns and I spread a mess out on the kitchen table and painted. My ultimate therapy. There is nothing like creating. Every brushstroke is rushed, hurrying toward the finished product, impatient to see what it will be. After it is done, I am disappointed, still wanting to be in the world of snow-laden trees and shadowed mountain crags emerging from the blank white surface of the old snowboard deck my friend gave me last Thursday. Add that to the yoga in my warm living room this morning before work, a bit interrupted by the dog who wanted to eat my yoga mat, and who eventually claimed the mat and fell asleep on it, and who was so extremely gassy there was no way for me to breathe deeply and rhythmically. And Bobby taking Andy out for a walk while I finished the painting, and now, I am on the couch watching the Olympics, all the cute, fit athletes and all the dreams coming true, getting the chance of a lifetime to be the best of the best...I am feeling much, much more cheerful. What do you know.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, in the land of grrrr. Only for us, though. the county has swelled with people in annoyingly good moods. Even Keystone employees are in these awful happy moods lately. They are chatty. In elevators where there is no escape, they rattle about how great it is, another day in paradise. Traffic backs up a half mile with cars leaving Keystone at 4:30. It is a three day weekend, and it shows. Our colds still have not left, in spite of copious amounts of vitamins C and D. Yours truly wonders what has come over her, hating taking the dog out skiing, not feeling like battling the crowds to play in the terrain park or shred the slopes, not that she has the time anyway, during the day. Coming home is not exciting, just another evening to be spent doing more chores, wash the dishes, vacuum the floor again, make fruit smoothies, scrounge in a fridge full of spoiled food and not much else for sustanance. Going to work is more of the same old same-o, rush through the same condos I was in four days ago, and will be in again four days from now. Change batteries in the carbon monoxide detectors, because they malfunction at this altitude and false alarm, causing them to get unplugged and the batteries to run down. Reprogram the same remotes I reprogrammed four days ago. Flip the same breakers back on that I flip back on every time. Same smells of chlorine from the pools and hot tubs, same slimy quartered limes to be dug out of crusty garbage disposals, same overflowing ice makers and closet doors off their tracks. The garbage disposals are the worst. There is no way to be able to see what is lurking, causing the blades to catch, the only option is to reach in. Yesterday it was a pickle. I reached in and felt something finger-sized, limp, and slimy. I recoiled a bit as I forced myself to pull it out. I am terrified that someday i will pull out something truly disgusting, like a dead mouse or (unreasonably) an actual finger.

Looking ahead, we think we may be able to work ahead to cover our work for March first and second, and hope the weather is nice in Fruita. A mountain bike ride where it is dry and somewhat warmish may be just what the doctor orders. I feel a little bad about driving so far for a day and a half of riding bike, but hey. It would save my faithful few from more posts from the land of grrr. There might even be posts from the land of sparkling spring snow and happiness.

Until then, do as I say, not as I do, and love life, because we only get one.

Hello and welcome to an...who-what problem? There is no problem. Unless you count not getting a walk. Or that really embarrassing one where you eat all the stuffing out of your moose, or your turtle, and then the stuffing sorta stays with you, you know what I mean? That can be a big problem. Lots of scooting. Not outside, there's too much snow. Ouch. But back in the house. My she-human says that is the most disgusting thing she has ever seen. And she has seen me barf. This one day...

Oh, right. So, my humans are sick and busy right now. Being the good boy that I am, I really want to help out. At the end of my she-human's last post, she snapped closed the computer, looked at me, and asked me why she even bothered. No time or energy to recount anything interesting, just more whining. I don't think whining is a bad thing. It usually leads to really good things, like belly rubs and peeing. My she-human actually fell asleep on the couch after she closed the computer, and I slept too, until I heard a noise outside and let loose with what I can only describe as a ferocious barage of barkage. Humans tend to scuttle away when I do that. They don't get my degrees of bark. But if I don't warn my own humans of potential garbage men, neighbors, and UPS men, how will they know they need protecting?

This could take a while. Opposable thumbs. Don't got em. But I am a good boy. I will stick with this with the single-minded determination I use when finding sticks under the snow.

My she-human told me to get my stick yesterday when we were walking, well, I was walking, she had those wide, green, flat knife- things on her feet that make her feet really long. Skis. that's it. I try to keep my distance. Those things will lay a hind leg wide open, and then they squirt this gooey stuff on it, and wrap it up, and it itches like a million fleas, but they won't let you chew on it, even though the gooey stuff tastes so good. I once got a hold of a tube of it. Oh, boy! I chewed it up good! My she-human says she hopes my insides are all good and disinfected. Me, too. One word. Giardia. Bad news. That's all I've got to say about that.

I found a stick, a really big one, under the snow, and dug and pulled until it popped loose, and held it right in the middle, and took off down the trail with my tail high, showing off, I suppose. And then that stick stopped dead, and I'm pretty sure I got little bits of pine bark on my tonsils. I guess that stick was wider than the trees I was running between. My she-human snapped it in half for me then. Genius! I'm not sure I would have thought of that even if I did have thumbs. That was the walk yesterday, and boy, I had to toe the line! Every little bit again, it was "Andy, heel. Andy, back. Andy, easy. Andy, sit. Andy stay. Andy, come. Andy, look at me." And the worst, that really awful "ERRRRR " that makes my tail clamp down so fast I wonder what's happening back there. It means I am being bad. And when it wasn't that, it was "Andy, get the stick. Andy, bring it back. Andy, drop it."

This last week has been one adventure after the next. Have I mentioned the slippers? I got a package in the mail one day that smelled like feet and cats and farm and old meat and yappy little dog. I knew it was mine, because nothing that smelled that good could possibly be anything but mine! And then my he-human let me grab it out of his hand and tear it up! It was amazing! Shreds of paper and plastic flew! Slippers?! Slippers!! From the she-human's parent's! To me, the granddog! Happy! Ecstatic! My tail actually hit me on both sides! I ripped! I chewed! I left shreds of slipper all over the floor! I was exhausted.

Raisin came to my house. She saw the slippers. Slippers!! We tugged! We pulled! We tussled and growled! We ripped the slippers in two and played tug of war with the halves!

We went for a ride in the car- I love the car. I watch where we are going very closely. I stick my whiskers in the driver's ear, and let my tongue drip on her shoulder. That's how they know I am on watch. They won't let me in the front seat. If they did, my happiness would be complete. But when they get out and leave me there, I keep their seats warm. I am a good dog. They always come back just when I am having the best dreams. I have to squirm out from under the steering wheel and stumble into the back seat while I'm still half- asleep. When we got out of the car, we were at this house we sometimes go to, but it's always empty. I wait in the car while my mommy goes inside and does whatever it is she does. this time, I was invited inside and there were people there. Uncle Leroy and Aunt Mary and Cole and Glenda. You have never felt the quality of belly rubs I experienced. They told me not to dumpster dive, but their trash had pizza in it. I love pizza. Cold, hot, moldy, I don't care. If it's pizza, I'll eat it. They had slippers, too, but I couldn't have them. They kept prying my mouth open and taking them out. Their toilet water was cold and fresh, and much better than the bowl of water the she-human gave me. My humans won't let me drink out of the toilet. My she-human has a note under the toilet lid saying "Please help save me from myself. Close the lid." Everyone says I have exceptional handwriting for a dog. But my she-human says you can't expect boys to remember to close the toilet lid until they have had their laps soaked by my chin, which is very drippy after I drink. I put my head in their laps so I can gaze up at them and show them just how much I love them. Because I do. I love my humans almost more than pizza. I often have to choose between pizza and humans. i choose humans, because if I don't, they get really scary and I am pretty sure I might get a shakedown. But the I spit it out and it never happens. Unless it's steak. If I ever get steak, I'll take the shaking. I just gulp really fast so they can't take it back out of my mouth. You'd think my mouth was public property. Everyone's always digging in it, making me gag, pulling stuff out of it. Nothing is safe until it goes down the hatch.

Which is why I ate the stuffing I may have mentioned. It's cottoney and springy in my mouth. it gave me a really bad stomach ache, though. Not to mention that other problem. Now the moose is flat and hollow. The moose was my first toy. My humans say it causes deviant behavior, and it always has. I don't know what that means, but I do know that whenever I am playing with the moose, my people tell me I don't have the equipment for that particular activity anymore. Apparently it has something to do with the trip to the vet and the morphine and the stitches and my missing unmentionables.

When I came home from the house with Uncle Leroy and Aunt Mary and the rest, there was another surprise. I was actually at home alone when it showed up. The door unlocked, and I headed out to pee, brushing past my she-human...and WHA? It wasn't my she-human, it was Grandma Sandi. I whipped around so fast I about took her out at the knees. I jumped! I raced in circles! I was completely puzzled! And then I smelled the yappy dog, Princess! Oh, my. That was a fun, fun two days. Princess and I played and played, until I made her squeal by getting her head stuck in my mouth. It's not my fault it fit in there.

We had a whole bunch of strangers here the other afternoon. They sat in front of the TV and yelled at it. I made circles, laying my head on each of their laps, rolling over for belly rubs. It was amazing. I have never felt so adored. I guess it is kinda nice to just be loved sometimes, instead of doing all the loving. People seem to like it better when I am just there, instead of all over them. Why that is, I don't know.

Okay, enough for today. I just wanted to introduce myself, the assistant editor of my she-human's blog. She has decided to get up and go to work at an insanely early hour tomorrow, since she fell asleep on the couch and now seems to have taken the day off after all. Or maybe she will still go tonight. At any rate, we have both been pretty worthless today. Now it is getting dark. I am still holding onto hope that there will be a walk.

I may be a dog, dumb and loyal, but my life affords me the opportunity to learn many lessons. At the end of each post I create, I will share one of them. Here is the first.

If a squeak doesn't work, try a whine. If a whine doesn't work, try a yip. If a yip doesn't work, try a howl. Eventually, someone will open the door and you will get to pee. Persistence pays.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where there be cooking. The pitas are out of the oven, mushrooms, avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, cucumbers, and feta cheese are all nestled into my divided tray, ready to go, the thin steaks are cooking in their bath of olive oil, oregano, garlic, onion, and thyme. The tzatziki sauce is mixed up and ready to go. I am taking gyros to our friend's house tonight, with the option for the vegetarians of the group to make falafels. My friend is making the falafel patties.



In the last few days, there has been snowboarding. Skiing for Uncle Leroy. Cross country skiing for the mother. Constant excitement and a miniature houseguest for the dog.

...Let me rephrase. In the last few days, there has been two paragraphs of this blog sitting in my drafts folder. It is now Monday, not Thursday.

Thanks to B's new TV, hosting of a Super Bowl party fell to us. Work is busy, and your blogger, along with B, has come under the clutches of a cold that refuses to leave. I am working on my second week, B is working on his third week of burning sinuses, chapped nose, raspy voice, and a constantly draining head. My voice all but left me by last night.

Someone reported us to trailer park management for our dog being a bit too friendly this week, so we have been trying to clamp down on his training, which means walks, not bike rides, and lots of verbal commands in cold that burns our chests and throats when we breathe it. Every time we get back in the house, we spend the rest of the evening hacking. We argue about who will walk the dog this time, and I usually lose.

Today has no arrivals, which normally would mean a day off, but the weekend starts tomorrow. Yes, in ski season, the weekend starts on Wednesday and guests pour in until Sunday night. They leave on Monday and Tuesday. I have an insane amount of work to do for tomorrow, so instead of a day off, I will be working. It is about this time of year we begin to feel a bit of malaise and begin scanning the job classifieds, the real estate listings, the weather forecasts for places like small, orchardy, mountain bike-ey towns on the western slope. Some day, we will blow this joint. Some day. Of course, we always decide to wait to blow it until after the season is over, and when it ends, we get a bonus check, and that alone is enough to humble us and make us retreat into a cloud of apologetic mumblings and promises and makes us decide again to hunker down and wait it out. We do not remember what it was like working a normal job. We think we may have had a bit more freedom. We at least got a day off a week, and often two days. Really. We only worked five days, and then had two whole days to do what we wanted. True, we did not get to decide on a whim to take a morning off, making up for it by working late in the evening or twice as hard the next day, but the fact is, it really isn't worth taking the time off if you are going to go cross-eyed from the stress of making up for it later. In the end, we still think we like a feast-or-famine job better, but in the middle of both phases, we go just a little bit crazy.

Which is what I am doing as I write, taking an ill-afforded morning. I am still in my pajamas, my new computer battery allowing me to type as I sit and warm my toes in a puddle of sunshine on my living room floor. The dog is tied up just outside the front door, against trailer park rules, but he is beyond happy, sniffing the breeze and soaking up the sun. What I want to do is sleep, but that could stretch into a much longer morning than I am willing to take.

I decided yesterday to plan our vacation for this spring. It seemed a good idea at the time. By last night, I did not want to hear the word "vacation" again. Apparently there is a reason we do not make itineraries. We tend to argue over details and schedules and time allotments. Our voices raised to the point of completely disappearing when our poor mucousy throats could not handle the amount of air we were trying to push through them. So all we know at this time is that, at some point after ski season, we may go west. Or northwest. Or southwest. In the truck, with the dog. Or book a Caribbean cruise (although I hope not). Or an Alaskan Cruise (I kinda hope so, but the chances are slim.) B wants to go somewhere to be warm. If I would so much as mention the Caribbean, he would jump all over it, take it in his teeth like Andy does a dirty sock, whip it out of my grasp and run away with it. I care not so much about warm, I want to be inspired. I want to take "America's loneliest highway" through Nevada, I want to see glaciers and rugged coastline and well, why not climb Half Dome, check out Mt. Rainier, Mt Hood, heck, why not buzz on up and check out Mt. McKinley? I think I have seen about enough palm trees and fat folks in swimwear, I want to see Redwoods. I want to see the most desolate, the most rugged, the biggest America has to offer. So you can see our problem. We could be done with the Caribbean in less than two weeks. I have a four thousand mile road trip planned to six national parks, a two day hike on Vancouver Island, mountain biking in northern Idaho, camping and mooching showers from friends or relatives... or a flight to the west coast followed by two weeks of freezing in the far north. If we had a month, we could maybe get it all done. We decided, last night, that planning a vacation was far more hassle than just throwing our suitcases, mountain bikes, hiking shoes, a mattress, and Andy into the back of the truck and hitting the road.

And now, time to...do something distastefully productive. Like get forty-some condos ready for check-in. That's a lot of patio doors to wash, remote controls to find, bedspreads to turn from sideways to right-end-up, blankets to fold, burner plates to clean, and light bulbs to change. (If one would think the housekeepers might do these things, just because it is in their job description, one would be wrong. Housekeepers are more speedy than thorough.)

On that note, have a wonderful day.

Hello and welcome to An altitude Problem, where there is no time for blogging. I should be working, although today is a day with no arrivals to check, and there is only one arrival tomorrow, the rest of my week is a bit crazy. But today is the day that my parents and Uncle Leroy and Aunt Mary get here, and I really want to go ride with whoever of them are skiing tomorrow, so today is the day I need to work ahead. And yet, here I sit, because once I walk out my front door, my day will get stressful. And I'm just not sure I'm ready for that yet.

We are just coming down from a three day marathon of the x games, friends coming over to take advantage of our cable in the evenings. Yesterday I recorded not only the evening events but the daytime ones, as well. I cooked dinner yesterday evening, we ate it and planted ourselves in front of the TV for at least four hours of extreme winter sports. And that was with fast-forwarding through events we did not care about, rider and skier interviews, and commercials.

Hmm. Not sure what I did. Hit enter for a new paragraph, and accidentally posted this. Oh, well. Anyone reading my blog today will see half a post until I can finish the other half and add it.

I got out the coffee ice cream the other night, to go with cookies fresh from the oven, and opened the box. It was empty. Seriously. Who does that? So I offered my guests hot chocolate with Bailey's Irish Cream instead. Got out the Bailey's. Empty. And then they had the nerve to say that seemed a lot like a Susan. Putting empty containers that had once contained sweets back where they belonged, so nobody would notice their contents had mysteriously disappeared. In my defense, I do not recall doing any such thing. But I also know that B does not like coffee ice cream or Irish Cream. And Andy is not tall enough to reach either, and lacks opposable thumbs to remove the lids and caps of such items.

In addition to watching the best of the best skiers and riders for the last three evenings, I have snowboarded enough to rub the balls of my feet raw. Skin is peeling off of them. It's a common winter malady for me. If I ride for too long, all the rocking onto and back off of the balls of my feet, especially in my snowboard socks that are rubbed thin there, tends to remove the callouses, then the skin below the callouses. Even when I am on my heel edge, my toes are still being pushed into the front of my boot, so when I come back to toe edge, they have to come back to center. Now I am walking gingerly, putting band-aids over the raw spots.

But riding has been excellent lately. Not so much fresh snow, at least not on piste, but soft snow, from a week of about two inches fresh every night, followed by several warm days that created icy slopes again, but also an urge to shed layers and enjoy a deep blue sky and burning sun and the park, echoing with whoops and yells from riders hitting features and calling to each other, the smell and sound of melting snow (have you ever noticed the faint crackle of the snow when it melts, and the smell of it? It's such a fresh, cold smell.), the tang of pine sap in the air and, yes, an occasional waft of smoke from a group of potheads hiding in the trees.

My park skills are far from skillful. I look at the features I took five years ago and do not understand how I did it. I stay far away from rails. But the jumps are calling my name again, since there really is nothing like flying. Even if one has to come down eventually, and hard. And I can't clear the lip of the half pipe, but I still enjoy hitting the walls as high as I can. So, although I do not do anything fancy, I have had fun spending several afternoons lately making loops over and over the jump lines, trying to get comfortable enough with being in the air, and staying balanced while in the air, that I can start attempting things more challenging than a boring board grab.

In the last few days I have been through all of my powder stashes on Keystone, dodging rocks and tree stumps not yet covered by snow. I have only had two crashes, but I can feel them both. One was while riding switch through a flat spot. I caught an edge and slammed down the way I used to when I was learning to ride. One instant riding tall, the next, flat on my back on the hard-packed run, looking up at the sky through watery eyes and gasping for breath. I am feeling the whiplash from it in my neck. The other was directly under the lift line, shredding bumps. I swung from straightlining down my line onto my back edge, slid for a speed check, and barely registered the clink of my front edge hitting a rock before I was tomahawking down the hill, head, then board, then head in the snow. I sat up dizzily to cheers from the chair above me, and one "You fall with STYLE, girl!" That one cranked my arm in it's socket, and it still hurts to rotate it.

And yes, this is in addition to working, just so nobody thinks I never work. It has been in the mornings between 8:45 and 11:00 (which is when the first cleans of the day are done and ready for me to inspect) and after 4:00, when the day's work is done. I honestly do not know what I would do if I worked at a ski resort that did not have night skiing. The five hours not spent on the slopes are spent running at a manic pace, because I have only five hours in which to do eight hours of work.

There are only twelve more weeks of winter. At least until we start seeing consistantly warm days. Like 40 degree days. It is now February. In two weeks, the crescendo starts to build. Valentine's day, then President's day, and then Spring Break in two weeks, the accordian season will be over. (That's what I call the season we're in right now, where weekends are nearly 100 percent booked, and midweek I can take a day off because everybody went home.) In two short weeks, we will be crazy busy until after Easter. And then, sweet, sweet time off. A vacation. Spring. Mud season. Fruita mountain biking. The first few actually warm days, spring run-off. B getting antsy because we're not getting a paycheck. Me telling B to can it. Me riding the corn and slush at A-basin. Me skiing up Keystone after it closes for the summer. Me starting running again. Me biking anywhere I can find dry ground. Me thinking life is pretty sweet. Me telling B so. B scowling and saying he's glad I'm so darn happy all the time. Me telling B to just admit that he likes me. B rolling his eyes and muttering "whatever" so he won't have to smile, before going back to working on bookwork, taxes, all the things that he seems to think are so necessary, and that keep him inside on a melty spring day.

And now, after a post of less substance, if it were possible, than my last one, I am off to work, minus snowboard gear. I had big plans for today that involved more riding, but I am afraid I shall just have to work instead. And I would like to point that out to the faithful few who think I do nothing but play.

I posted to my Facebook profile this morning that I wished I had a clone to go to work for me, so I could spend more time in the really wonderful part of my life, out on the slopes. But then I got to thinking that any clone of mine would probably do a hurried job so she could go snowboarding, if she were actually a true genetic copy. Bummer. I suppose a clone of me is about the last thing we need around here. If I want it done right, i'm just going to have to do it myself. I can barely trust me. And besides, if there were two of me, the peanut butter would always be empty.